


With Bitter Herbs and Rue

by the_rck



Series: All the Faces We Were [1]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9359261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: When Layla knows she's right, she doesn't let anything stop her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Written for Fandom Stocking 2016.
> 
> Title from Sonnet XLIV in Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Layla didn’t bother to give herself a hero name. Part of that was that she knew she wasn’t going to be seen as a hero, and part of that was that the whole thing seemed ridiculous. The plants didn’t care what humans called her. She suspected that someone, at some point, was going to tag her as Poison Ivy even if the entire Batman universe was fictional.

She supposed it could be worse. Someone (probably Zach) might laugh and point out that she spoke for the trees. Being called The Lorax really didn’t appeal to her.

She’d known, by the time she reached college, that she had a choice. She could be the sort of hero society— through Sky High’s indoctrination— had tried to make her, or she could abandon all of that in order to help the world survive. She knew that choosing the latter route would mean being seen as a villain and, probably, fighting people she loved, but she also knew the difference between right and easy.

Still, she hesitated. She told herself that her degree was important, that she needed to know the science behind climate change and the global effects of deforestation and the local effects of pollution and vanishing species. The plants talked to her, but a single dandelion didn’t understand the air currents that brought rain from three hundred miles away or even why low ground was more likely to flood.

She knew, though, that what she really wanted was a little more time with her friends. Her mother might understand but maybe not since she’d never felt the need to do what Layla intended to do, what Layla saw as the only ethical course.

She was pretty sure that none of her friends understood the extent of her powers. Will, having known her all his life, should have, but at the points when he might have figured it out, he had been too focused on his own… issues. Warren had asked, but his own powers were so very different, so much more direct, than hers that he probably hadn’t filled in the things she didn’t say.

Her choices were going to break Warren’s heart. 

Will would be angry, but there’d be some level of purity in it. He'd remain whole. 

Warren would— Yes, Warren would understand, and he would disagree with her. Not so much because she was wrong as because he knew the costs of being seen as— of actually being— a villain. He might even join her. Not because he believed but because he loved her and didn't want her to be alone.

And that might break her heart, too, but she was right. She knew she was right.

**Author's Note:**

> If Layla's yearbook photo, senior year, didn't have a caption reading 'Most Likely to Become Magneto,' I really do think no one was paying attention. Or they'd never heard of Magneto.


End file.
